The Art of Roman Pizza: Learning From Italy's Famous Baker

By Katie Parla

Gabriele Bonci has been called "the Michelangelo of pizza"—and now anyone can sign up for his classes

At age 14, Gabriele Bonci bought a scooter. For most Romans, this is a
normal rite of passage, but for the teenager who would become Italy's
foremost celebrity baker, it was the beginning of his career. "I'd drive
that scooter all over town to bakeries. My father would have to drag me
home," Bonci reminisced. Surveying his massive frame, it's difficult to
imagine anyone dragging him anywhere.

Clearly, the early start
paid off and by 17, Gabriele was working in restaurant kitchens. He had
early dreams of becoming a cook, penning a middle school term paper on
the topic. His penchant for baking ultimately led him to open Pizzarium,
Rome's most revered pizza al taglio (pizza by the slice) joint, in July
2003.

Pizza by the slice is a ubiquitous street food in Rome,
and in some venues, like Pizzarium, it has become an art form;
accordingly, Vogue consecrated Bonci "the Michelangelo of pizza" some
years back. Unlike the round personal pizzas one might encounter at a
sit-down pizzeria in Rome, pizza al taglio is a rectangular or oblong
slab of dough that is cut into quadrilateral slices and sold by weight.
While the approach (to dough, for example) varies from place to place,
the basic formula calls for baked flatbread with toppings. In Rome, the
quality of ingredients for both strata have seen an unfortunate decline
over the past decades as the costs of artisanal flour, cheese, and cured
meats have risen sharply, leading them to be replaced with industrial
substitutes.

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Bucking the trend, Bonci uses high-quality ingredients, including flour from Mulino Marino,
a Piedmont-based mill that stone-grinds heritage grains. Bonci mixes
the flour with water and sourdough starter (of which he has an
assortment, the oldest dating back to World War I), salt, and oil. He
works the dough gingerly, then leaves it to rise for up to 72 hours.
When baked, the result is a thick (but not dense), bubble-riddled
foundation upon which ingeniously paired ingredients are laid to rest.

Toppings
change daily, even from one hour to the next, and in an average day
more than 20 types of pizzas may grace Pizzarium's countertop. Varieties
range from the classic, exquisitely simple "rosso," topped with a slick
layer of olive-oil-rich tomato sauce, to unusual or creative combos: on
a recent trip, I tried slices with Serrano ham and robiola; pumpkin,
speck, and caciocavallo; cured rabbit, raisins, and fennel; escarole,
olive, and pancetta; potato and mozzarella; and chickpea spread and
mortadella. The daily toppings are impossible to predict, but expect to
find playful permutations of cured meats, cheeses, and seasonal produce.

His appearances have become such a phenomenon that they have even spawned their own theme song, which borrows its refrain and infections tune from Brazilian pop group As Meninas.

Pizzarium also sells bread and an assortment of fried snacks like
suppli', balls of rice mixed with various fillings. There is also a
selection of quality products made by others: Vitaliano Bernabei's
porchetta from Marino, Mulino Marino's flour from Cossano Belbo, and plenty of craft beers from Italy and Belgium, including Birra del Borgo's Enkir, a beer born from a collaboration between Bonci and the brewery.

Bonci has expanded beyond Pizzarium, appearing regularly on the
nationally broadcast television show La Prova del Cuoco. He teaches
viewers--and the ditsy host--to make bread dough, pizzas, and sourdough
starter. His appearances have become such a phenomenon that they have
even spawned their own theme song, which borrows its refrain and
infections tune from Brazilian pop group As Meninas.
La Prova del Cuoco propelled Bonci into the national spotlight and
permits him to deliver his message of "good food for the masses" to a
much wider audience.

His clientele is quite diverse. "At
Pizzarium you will find the grandmother with her grandchild, laborers,
tourists, a politician from the PD, all together. This is a portrait of
society," Bonci says. And customers, regardless of pull or prestige,
queue for pizza in a surprisingly civilized manner (by Roman standards)
within the narrow confines of the shop. Despite his success, Bonci has
no plans for expanding Pizzarium. At the time of writing, the shop was
undergoing renovations, having been completely gutted to redesign the
space. The most significant change? "We are stealing 15 centimeters from
the storefront to give to the laboratorio in the back. People told me
to make the shop bigger. I made it smaller!"

Rather than grow
bigger at Pizzarium, Bonci has new plans in the works. He has been
scouting for a space dedicated to baking bread and teaching apprentices.
In mid-January, he began teaching bread and pizza classes at Tricolore,
a bakery and cooking school in Rome's Monti district.

I
attended the first pizza class, a two-day course that convened on
consecutive evenings for three hours each. The first evening, we learned
to make our own dough, following a recipe that was tailored to match
the skill and equipment of home bakers, and on the second, we made
pizzas with our dough. During the course, we were also given
pre-prepared dough with which to experiment; one became pizza and the
other, a Pugliese-style focaccia.

Classes are rather reasonably
priced at 170 euros, which includes two days' materials, instruction,
and pizza tastings—a small price to pay to learn from a master. When
asked where his enormous success comes from, Bonci sits up straighter
and points with an enormous finger over my right shoulder. Franco
Palermo, legendary baker and Bonci's master, skulks past us, letting
loose a subdued grin. "Him. It's all his fault."